Gonzales, So-lo Piano

Gonzales So-lo Piano (No Format) This is the week's biggest surprise. Chilly Gonzales, the wisecracking Canadian showman-rapper based in Berlin, is revealed on So-lo Piano as a very different creature to his loud 'entertainist' persona. He is, really, a well brought-up boy who clearly had piano lessons as a kid. This musical background stood in him in good stead, playing and arranging for Jane Birkin recently. He would have done the same for Charles Aznavour had the big man not sacked him. Solo Piano (released on the same label as Jamie Cullum) offers up 16 tracks of what is, ostensibly, hotel lobby instrumental piano muzak. But Gonzales has an unexpected lightness of touch, and an unshowy way with the keys that recalls his declared influences, Keith Jarrett, Ravel and Satie. A small, quiet piano record that's a great deal prettier than you'd expect.

Jean Grae This Week (Orchestral / Babygrande) If she registers at all, Jean Grae is known here as a guest vocalist on the Roots's recent album. Hopefully, This Week will garner her a well-deserved profile of her own. Although the rapper's tough-girl verbal flow is New York through and through - she's at her most bristling on 'You Don't Want It' - Grae was actually born in South Africa. She is the daughter of jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim and her real name is Tsidi, a biography which sets her up as a more intriguing voice than your average hood hard nut. But This Week is hardly exotic: her eloquent raps take everyday life as their subject. The highlight here is 'Supa Luv', a track powered by hot producer 9th Wonder (Jay-Z, Destiny's Child). It's evidence that Lauryn Hill-style mainstream acclaim is well within her grasp, should this indie rap princess choose to reach out for it.

Neil Young Greatest Hits (Reprise) Amazingly, this is the first official attempt to gather Neil Young's works into an easily-assimilable package. Most of the Young songs familiar to the average rock passer-by are included here: 'Like a Hurricane', 'Heart of Gold' and so on. In this, Neil Young's greatest hits does what it says on the tin, and makes a perfectly useful primer to the shaggy master's work. A couple of Crosby Stills Nash and Young tracks provide softer counterpoints to all the rock ('Helpless' and 'Ohio').

But what's perhaps more notable here is the fact the label didn't feel the need to flatter their artist by including any recent work: most of the songs here date from the Seventies. Hardcore Young fans will find the selection a bit bowdlerised, too, in that it skirts Young's more challenging work. They're a grumpy lot, anyway, still waiting on the long-anticipated Neil Young box set. With those goodies still out of reach, this hits package will feel like a derisory sop.

Jay Sean Me Against Myself (Relentless) The past few years have seen US hip hop and R&B pilfering hooks from Asian music, and an upsurge in all things subcontinental in the UK. Singer, hip hop fan and medical school dropout Jay Sean operates at the faultline of these pop cultures. He's conscious of the pitfalls of Asian crossover success, however. With Me Against Myself, his debut, he's keen to make a commercial R&B record that acknowledges his roots with out it ending up a faddish mishmash. Production comes from the reigning star of the Asian/urban collision Rishi Rich and, mostly, the duo succeed: the very accessible 'Eyes On You' has already been a hit. But the biggest disappointment here is that the R&B is both bland and weirdly derivative, with 'Eyes On You' recalling 'I Got Five On It' by the Luniz and Kevin Lyttle's 'Turn Me On' simultaneously.

If only he'd managed to work with Timbaland, the US producer most au fait with Indian music who Jay met and took record shopping. Frustratingly, too, there's a real mischievous intelligence lighting up the skits and the title track: here, Jay Sean, the old hip-hop head, berates Jay Sean the smooth operator: 'the Asian Craig David', he taunts himself, 'I'm surprised that Simon Cowell hasn't thought of it.' If only the rest of the album had this much character.